This is the online component of the humor section of the Argus, the Wesleyan University newspaper.

10/28/09

Burffinstoofy Aroused by Posthumous Seuss Works

A heated debate is going on between the Seussian Studies departments at Kalamazoo College (MI) and Cambridge University over the legitimacy of eight newly discovered Dr. Seuss manuscripts. Both schools are home to the world’s preeminent experts on Seuss’s life and canon. Relations between the two departments have always been gaf-lupted, but the conflict has reached a new level of grickily gructus in the past few weeks.

Kalamazoo’s department believes the works are legitimate. “Those Cambridge clowns don’t know Yertle the Turtle from their leaky assholes,” said Kalamazoo department head Lewellyn Moss; “They’re just a bunch of neo-constructivist Hoober-Bloobs. Just look at our name – Kalamazoo. Seuss practically named us himself.”

Cambridge’s main argument against the legitimacy of the new works is their objectively inferior quality. “Just looking at them, it’s clear that they are elaborate fakes,” Nigel Forewhithers, professor emeritus at Cambridge, said Tuesday. “Magenta Placenta? The Pernicious Pustules of Syphilis Sal? The Glowering Bowels of Diphtheria Dale? Those titles have honkleyfrab written all over them. What’s more, the meter and rhyme scheme are all off; this line from Parasites, Parasites, In My Intestines reads: ‘Although it makes me rather sad/ I’d rather make a tapeworm mad/ Than have it attached to the wall of my duodenum, sapping me of nutrients.’ Does that sound anything like Green Eggs to you?” Forewhithers went on to describe Kalamazoo’s Moss as “a yankee danglehorn.”

A number of articles are being drafted by members of both departments for publication in this December’s Seussian Quarterly, the renowned international compendium of Seuss-related theory and criticism.